Malaysian aircraft shot down in Ukraine, 295 killed

Agencies, Grabovo, Ukraine
A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian militants on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official said.

Raising the stakes in the East-West showdown between Kiev and Moscow, the official blamed ‘terrorists’ using a ground-to-air missile and Ukraine’s prime minister called the downing of the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur a ‘catastrophe’.

A Reuters correspondent saw burning wreckage and bodies on the ground at the village of Grabovo, about 40 km (25 miles) from the Russian border in an area where pro-Russian rebels have been active and have claimed to have shot down other aircraft.

Emergency Ministry official on site said body parts are scattered around up to 15 kilometres from crash site and that at least 100 bodies are seen.

The Boeing 777 came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, interior ministry official Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook, adding it was ‘shot down with a Buk anti-aircraft system by terrorists’ – the term the Kiev government uses for militants seeking to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia. The dead were 280 passengers and 15 crew.

Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed it had lost contact with its flight MH-17 from Amsterdam. “The last known position was over Ukrainian air space,” it said.

A rebel leader said Ukrainian forces shot the airliner down. Ukrainian official said their military was not involved.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko said his country’s armed forces did not shoot at any airborne targets.

“We do not exclude that this plane was shot down, and we stress that the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not take action against any airborne targets.”

Poroshenko said, “We are sure that those who are guilty in this tragedy will be held responsible.”

Interior ministry official Gerashchenko was quoted as saying: “A civilian airliner travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has just been shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft system … 280 passengers and 15 crew have been killed.” Upon hearing the news, Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd Najib Tun Razak tweeted, “I am shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation.”
Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), a typical cruising altitude for airliners. Ukraine has accused Russia of taking an active role in the four-month-old conflict in recent days and accused it earlier on Thursday of shooting down a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet – an accusation that Moscow denied.

The military commander of the rebels, a Russian named Igor Strelkov, had written on his social media page shortly before the report of the airliner being downed that his forces had brought down an Antonov An-26 in the same area. It is a turboprop transport plane of a type used by Ukraine’s forces.